Words Dept.: entry

Steve Penk is a man whose career has followed the trajectory of Alan Partridge. Having started on local radio, he somehow lands a gig on prime time TV before it all goes horribly wrong and he’s forced to return to local radio. In Penk’s case the story is especially pathetic, since he had to buy and subsequently ruin a much-loved indie station in order to get himself employed as a breakfast DJ playing MOR crap .

All that might sound a bit mean-spirited. And of course, it is. But it’s nothing when compared with Penk’s stunt last Thursday morning, in which he played Van Halen’s Jump after hearing that a woman had caused traffic “chaos” by threatening to jump off a bridge above the M60. According to the DJ:

On Thursday [14 January 2010] a regular listener, we’ll call him ‘Bob’, (because that’s his name!), was seething with frustration because, along with thousands of other ordinary people, his daily routine had been completely wrecked. The entire area had been thrown into total chaos by the inexplicable actions of a single, troubled woman.

Bob texted me to request the classic rock track ‘Jump’ by Van Halen and, after careful consideration, I decided to play it because I knew it would send out a clear signal of ‘empathy’ to all those gridlocked drivers who were going to be late for work, school, a hospital appointment, etc. through no fault of their own.

You’ll find that wankers tend to use the phrase “total chaos” to describe a traffic jam and Penk is no exception.

In the event, the “troubled woman” did as Van Halen suggested by quite literally “jumping” off the bridge (this is how Sky News reported it), leaving Penk with an obvious moral victory over the senseless, selfish actions of one of the most gravely distressed members of his local community. Way to go Steve!

No, but seriously, Penk was suitably contrite over his decision:

I was, of course, very sorry to hear that the lady had subsequently jumped from the bridge but relieved that her injuries were minor.

If, as has been suggested, the woman jumped because she heard the song from a passing car radio that’s unfortunate but I don’t regret playing it for a minute.

And now, here’s a couple of extracts from the Ofcom broadcasting code:

2.4 Programmes must not include material (whether in individual programmes or in programmes taken together) which, taking into account the context, condones or glamorises violent, dangerous or seriously antisocial behaviour and is likely to encourage others to copy such behaviour. (See Rules 1.11 to 1.13 in Section One: Protecting the Under-Eighteens.)

2.5 Methods of suicide and self-harm must not be included in programmes except where they are editorially justified and are also justified by the context. (See Rule 1.13 in Section One: Protecting the Under-Eighteens.)

It’d be a shame, wouldn’t it, if Penk’s radio station received a really massive Ofcom fine?